Blockrise, a Netherlands-based Bitcoin-only startup, has secured a regulatory license that opens the door for fully regulated Bitcoin financial services across Europe.
The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) has granted Blockrise a license under the new Europe-wide Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework, the company announced Wednesday.
Issued on Tuesday, the MiCA license allows Blockrise to provide its Bitcoin (BTC) services, including custody solutions, trading and asset management, throughout Europe.
Additionally, Blockrise is debuting a new service that allows its business clients to obtain Bitcoin loans, even though MiCA does not yet regulate cryptocurrency lending services.
Business loans starting at $23,000
“MiCA is the basis for Blockrise to provide Bitcoin-backed loans, only provisioning to business clients in order to stay within the regulatory constraints,” Blockrise CEO Jos Lazet told Cointelegraph.
Starting today, Blockrise will offer a new credit service to all its corporate clients, with business loans starting at 20,000 euros ($23,150).
“Borrowers can collateralize their Bitcoin and open a loan against it,” Lazet said, adding that the current interest rate is 8%, but is revisited every month.
Implemented in full in late 2024, MiCA regulates crypto issuance and trading, though it doesn’t cover many industry services and areas such as lending, decentralized finance (DeFi) and more.
Addressing MiCA’s regulatory scope, the Blockrise CEO expressed optimism about the framework’s potential to scale in the coming years.
Related: Bitcoin-only app Relai gets EU green light under MiCA
“MiCA doesn’t regulate everything yet, however, it is expected to extend over time and include more scopes, such as lending, mining, payments, etc,” Lazet said, adding:
“MiCA is a requirement in order to provide Bitcoin-backed loans, such as the MiCA licenses to custody, transfer and broker.”
Founded in 2017, Blockrise operates a crypto asset management company that offers a “semi-custodial wallet structure.” Unlike with pure self-custody, where users can recover their assets using a private key, Blockrise clients have a digital Blockrise key, which has no value other than accessing BTC on the platform, according to the CEO.
“Blockrise has multiple vaults, so-called Hardware security modules, which securely generate Bitcoin wallets, and the keys cannot be extracted out of the vault. To make a transaction, the user’s Blockrise key is needed,” Lazet said, adding that there’s a dependency on both the user and Blockrise to sign for transactions.
Because Blockrise does not directly custody user funds in the traditional sense, Lazet said assets under management are “a tough measurement.” The company currently oversees about 100 million euros ($116 million) in client assets, he said.
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